


The Universal Cure

by Filigree



Series: Food Fantasies [5]
Category: Eroica Yori Ai o Komete | From Eroica with Love
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Food Sex, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-18
Updated: 2010-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-12 00:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigree/pseuds/Filigree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus has a cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Universal Cure

The Major's nose itched. When he silently scratched it, the itch simply fled deeper up into his sinuses. There it grew into a maddening sensation that could end only one way --

"Achoo!"

"Sir? Major?" the voice on the other end of the telephone line sounded worried. "Was that you? Are you all right?"

"Ja," said Klaus, as tersely as possible, but he still felt the nasal tone creeping into his normally-clear voice. His nose was _dripping_ now, traitor that it was. "I am fine," he lied, wondering when the other sneeze would hit. He'd always suffered them in pairs, a dual torment sometimes spaced out in long, itchy minutes.

"Well, then, sir -- we were all wondering if you'd like to join us all for -- "

"ACHOO!"

God, and the worst of it was that the second sneeze always felt so _good._

"Sir!"

Klaus glared at the telephone receiver, then barked into it: "Yes, damn it, I'm sick. That influenza _you_ lot picked up in Sweden last month, no doubt. And no, I would not drive back into Bonn at this time of night -- even if I was healthy. You're on your own." He grinned viciously, at a certain memory. "Found any discount cakes for your Christmas party?"

The strangled cough from the speaker convinced him that Agent A remembered the incident of the dubiously-called 'Paradise Party.' But not as clearly as the Major's intestines, which promptly knotted up at the mere thought of stale sweets.

A's next comment -- or, rather, the undisguised concern and pity in the man's tone -- made Klaus even angrier. "Yes, dammit, I am satisfied to be here at Eberbach on Christmas Eve. About the only time I get some peace and quiet, with the way you lot function. No, I'll be fine in a few days. Fine enough for duty. Good night, Herr A." Klaus slammed down the receiver before the next pair of titanic sneezes embarrassed him even more. Somehow, cutting off the other man's tentative farewell felt wrong. Why? A and the other Alphabets knew their Major preferred being alone on this night.

His servants were all down at the village, at family parties or at church. His kitchen was well-stocked with leftovers, but all Klaus really wanted at the moment was whiskey. He knew precisely how many bottles of good single-malt were in his cellar, and how many he'd have to drink to numb himself into a stupor. He settle for four or five rich, dark beers, too.

That was the way he'd normally spent this holiday. Alone, drunk, and bitter, in a bedroom suite that he'd called _his_ all his life, yet never really invested with any stamp of himself. The same heavy dark furniture and worn Persian carpets, the expected accumulation of stolid antiques common in a grand old schloss. The familiar chrome-hooded light fixtures dated from the Fifties, when they had been designed after some mad Dane's idea of 'sleek' and 'modern'. Only now they looked more timeworn than the ancient furniture.

Everything was fanatically clean, of course.

Klaus couldn't abide filth. Not when he didn't have to, in the field. And not here.

It was less of a refuge than a place of quarantine. Wasn't that always the case, though? He'd lurked here in the dark days after Maman died, before his father had sent him away to school. On holidays thereafter, this set of rooms -- study, bathroom, bedroom -- had been no more than a place to sleep and store his scant gear. Faced with any of twenty acceptable suites, including the one that had been his father's, Klaus had never changed his lair at Eberbach.

What the rooms had witnessed since he'd joined the Army, and then NATO -- well, wasn't it better to confine the setbacks of his life to one storeroom, where he could examine them in privacy?

The flat in Bonn was just as bland, or would be if Dorian didn't keep bringing things to lighten it. Plants, flowers in vases, new pictures for the walls, interesting and artistic books for the shabby shelves. And food.

Even before his new relationship with the charming thief, Klaus had preferred to sleep there, in the city. But he wouldn't sully that good and warm place with bad memories, so he'd resolved never to spend a Christmas there.

The illness kept him from wallowing, this year. He knew better than to drink, with medications already bubbling through his bloodstream. And there were other reasons to deviate from pattern. Thanks to that irrepressible thief, Klaus had sweeter memories to cherish in the bleak night.

#

He sneezed again, and again.

As if on cue, the heavy damask curtains of his study

rippled in the firelight.

"'S you. Wondered when you'd show up," Klaus sighed.

"Should go. One 'f us should stay well."

Only Dorian's head peered out from around the curtain. "Dear heart, you know me better than that. When I heard the NATO doctors had sent you home, and you weren't at the flat, I knew you needed me more than ever."

Klaus smiled. "Always need you. Now go 'way."

The thief sauntered out, dressed in what he'd considered to be festive holiday garb. Black catsuit and silent-soled boots. A wide belt supported any number of clever devices meant for stealthy infiltration of unfriendly territory. The elegant hands swung a large wicker basket, covered with a red-and-white cloth. The rest of Dorian --

"Why are you wearing a red, hooded cloak?"

"Why, to visit the big bad wolf, of course." Dorian winked. "It's silk velvet. I rather thought you'd like to see me draped in nothing but this, on that lovely bed of yours. And you could pull it off me, slowly, an inch at a time."

Klaus would. Instead of saying so, he sneezed.

"Really," said Dorian, drawing back a bit, as Klaus held up one hand in a wait-for-it gesture. "I can see now that -- "

"ACHOO!"

"-- I was perfectly right," Dorian said serenely, as if Klaus' new punctuation didn't exist. "You need some coddling, my darling steel orchid."

"You'll get sick."

"Maybe not. _I've_ had my flu shot. I can't let you wait this out alone. It's a bad time of year, I've gathered. You know, I was going to kidnap you for a cozy little Christmas at a retreat outside of London? Couldn't cancel without losing the payment, either, so my lads are living it up, right now."

"Pay you back. Later," said Klaus, hating the liquid rattle in the back of his throat.

"Poor darling, you'll pay me back _now_, by not fighting me. I shan't go away tonight, no matter how you yell. So save your voice."

Dorian flung the cloak onto a chair, and briskly started unloading the basket. Klaus halfway expected something frivolous, like a heap of southern-hemisphere strawberries or a pile of delicate canapes. Instead, Dorian set out two entirely-ordinary stoneware bowls and big silver spoons. "Are you hungry?"

There had been crackers and packaged broth from a vending machine, hours ago, Klaus remembered. Before the doctors marched into his office and sent him home. His stomach growled now, linked somehow directly to his nose. How could a nose that clogged still smell _anything_?

A silver-foiled plastic bag opened to reveal wafts of faintly chicken-scented steam.

"No," said Klaus.

"Oh, yes," said Dorian. "I have it on good authority that Time, Love, and Chicken Soup are universal cures, and you're due to be lavished with all three. Now get into bed and pile up the pillows, so you can sit upright. Did the butler leave the lap tray? Ah yes, the good man did. I have here Bonham's Grandmama's recipe for chicken soup, which he swears is a sovereign remedy for anything from the ague to a broken heart. He made it this morning, special. We have orange juice, a hot tonic made from honey and apple vinegar, some red tea Jones orders from South Africa -- and since the man is _never_ ill, we'll just have to trust him! -- and the other half of the pharmacy that the NATO gentlemen didn't send home with you, because they knew you wouldn't bother with it since you were alone."

Klaus let him patter on, the light warm voice as soothing as a bath. It was humiliating to be sick in front of one's lover. But not so bad, he was discovering, as being sick alone.

"You'll regret this," Klaus said, when Dorian stopped for a breath.

A wicked sunny smile flickered back at Klaus. "I'm certain of it." The smile turned gentle, without being gloating or clingy. "But I wouldn't leave you alone. Not tonight. Getting drunk doesn't make the memories blur, you know," he said with razor-sharp compassion.

"Whatever you know --" Klaus began.

"I'll keep to myself," said Dorian. "I really don't know much, and I don't intend to pry. I'm not a shrink, darling. Just someone who loves you. Now eat, before the soup gets cold."

It was the best chicken soup Klaus had ever tasted.

He was still amazed that he could taste anything. He had two helpings, and the bowls were not little. And he hadn't sneezed in over twenty minutes, when Dorian collected the bowls and put them back in the basket. Klaus lay back on a heap of pillows, and watched as the red-cloaked thief bustled over the next course.

"Medicines, I'm afraid," said Dorian.

"Do I get any sugar to help them down?" Klaus surprised himself by asking.

If Dorian was surprised, he hid it behind a light laugh. "There's dessert, don't worry. We seem to have this little tradition."

"What did you bring?"

"You'll see."

"I'm -- I'm sick," Klaus faltered, embarrassed. "Not up for games, just now. Sorry, Dorian."

A wounded sniff. "As if I'd _push_ you? Don't be sorry, darling. Sometimes it's good just to be teased a little, or held."

Silently, Klaus took the rest of the medicines. The warmth of the soup unlocked his nose again. He sniffed discreetly once or twice, then found a boxful of soft tissues deposited in his lap. Dorian looked away, as Klaus gratefully and awkwardly blew his nose.

"'M not used to having a nurse."

"I know." Dorian stood away from the bed, and caught up the cloak with a practiced flourish. "I'll be in the loo for a few minutes."

Klaus sat silently for the duration of his lover's absence. So, he couldn't pass the night in his usual solitary drunken fashion. Maybe it was a sign from God, to grow up and get over it.

_God has a filthy sense of humour, sending me a queer angel for my confessor!_

Maybe God, like Klaus himself, was simply tired of it all.

#

The bathroom door opened to frame an angel half-wrapped in swathes of red velvet, with naked ivory flesh shining above and below. The rich gold hair fluffed out into a cloud. Under lowered lids, Dorian's eyes had deepened to the colour of a clear evening sky.

"I have something rather wonderful, for you," Dorian husked.

"I know," Klaus bantered back, suddenly overjoyed that Dorian was with him, here and now. "But what's for dessert?"

"I thought you didn't like sweets." The angel stalked closer, a trail of velvet cloak dragging along the mattress beside Klaus.

Klaus couldn't resist, and put one finger on the velvet. Dorian stopped instantly, as if tethered, and looked back over his shoulder. "I like some of them," Klaus whispered, startled again at the heat of his reaction. "In small amounts. With the right person to share with."

Dorian yielded to a few more gentle tugs. The cloak loosened, fell shimmering down his hips and legs. Klaus tugged sharper, twitching the fabric up onto the bed. The velvet was warm, smelling very little of roses and more of Dorian's own musk. The man's bared back was still turned toward Klaus, and those slender hands were raised up and hidden in front of him.

"Ah," said Klaus, "dessert." He leaned forward, to kiss the small of Dorian's back, and then down a brave inch or two. There was a sneeze building again, dammit, but he couldn't – he just wouldn't –

The explosion was muffled against sleek flesh. Klaus threw himself facedown into the bed, and groaned in utter mortification.

Dorian giggled musically. "Oh! You know, darling, we might put _that_ to good use, if you can time it better --"

"Pervert," Klaus gasped, torn now between laughter and the next sneeze. Both prevailed at once, which proved painful and liberating: "Ah. Ah. A-C-H-O-O!" Klaus grabbed for a tissue, mopped his streaming eyes and then his nose. His rousing body had subsided again. "This isn't -- going to work. Seducing a sick man."

"Who said I was seducing you? I meant to make you laugh. Feel better?"

Klaus did. Sniffling a bit, he sat up again, tossed the tissue at the floor, and grabbed Dorian's hips.

The thief turned to grin down at him. Beautiful lips were already slick and glossed with sugar, from the large peppermint candy cane that Dorian had been licking with familiar skill. That Dorian had been hiding under the velvet.

"No," said Klaus.

"Tis the season," Dorian offered the cane tip-first, provocatively. It was a large red-and-white-striped cane, perhaps three centimetres thick. "You _like_ mint. Or at least you did, when we shared that breathmint after the bistro in Paris."

"I don't want the props, anymore," Klaus growled, uneasily aware that he _did_ want Dorian again.

"I'll give up my props, if you'll give up yours," Dorian said, chin lifting so he could look at Klaus down the length of his aristocratic nose. That pink tongue darted out, caressing the rounded tip of the cane.

"Don't have props."

"Really? Your gun, your cigarettes, your command, your honour, your duty --" Dorian said, pique only half-veiled behind his teasing tone. "And whatever it was that happened to you one Christmas, between the time you were seventeen and the hour I met you in front of Tyrian's portrait. Is that not a prop? You cherish it enough!"

Klaus glared up at him. "Are you trying to start a fight?"

"A fight, or laughter, or singing and dancing -- or lovemaking. _Anything_, to break this mood of yours."

" 'S not so easy." Klaus fell back among the pillows, covering his face with his hands. "Can't just forget everything."

"I'm not asking you to." Dorian slithered into bed, discarding the sticky candy-cane on the bedside table. Folds of velvet came up to cocoon both men. "You don't even have to talk about it. Just let me be here, with you. Or we could get you nicely bundled up, and go somewhere better. Your flat in Bonn?"

Klaus shook his head. "Must be here. Have to be here, for this night."

"Suit yourself," said Dorian, snuggling closer with his head resting on Klaus' pajama-clad chest. "Whatever gives you comfort."

"No comfort," the Major muttered. "I just don't like to run away. Better to face things."

"You ran from me, for years," Dorian drawled, before he could fully decipher Klaus' tense voice and words. "Good God. Klaus? Klaus! It was _here_??"

A slight, stiff nod.

"In this bed? And you _sleep_ here? What the hell happened?"

"You said you wouldn't ask."

"I'm sorry, but I have to wonder, now. My poor darling!" Dorian lifted up to stare at him in the low light. The blue eyes were shrewd, but kind. "Doesn't mean I can't deduce things. Does NATO psych know anything about this?"

Klaus gave a bitter laugh. "Only some of it. I didn't actually lie, in debriefing. I made some enemies, my first year in NATO. Double agents, men my commanders trusted but I did not. There was a Christmas party, here at the Schloss. Father was in Gstaad that year, God be praised. I got a little drunk. Or maybe they slipped something in my beer. They stayed behind, after everyone else left, and the servants were all gone. Caught me here, asleep."

"It wasn't your fault, Klaus."

Pale green eyes shut out Dorian, and the room as it was now. "_I didn't fight them off, Dorian_. I was too drunk. Or I thought I'd have a better chance, after. I thought it couldn't be much different than the things I did, alone. But they -- took a long time about it, and they hurt me."

"What did NATO find in the morning?"

Klaus' face was emotionless as stone. "Two dead Stasi agents in the study, in front of my rifled desk. Cleaned up, and dressed, with their necks snapped, and incriminating papers in their jackets." A low wordless growl rumbled in his chest. "I was reprimanded for killing them before they could be interrogated. Written up, for not obeying _procedure_. But I I couldn't --"

Dorian thought of how it must have played out: an assault by two men on a third, whom they thought helpless. A turn of fortunes. And then that beautiful young man -- in pain, humiliated, and in shock -- having to rally his wits and stage one crime scene to conceal another, all for his family's honour and his own career.

"I couldn't leave them alive, to tell," Klaus said, and Dorian saw again the nerve and cunning of the Major's ruthless ancestors. No, that killing wouldn't have been achieved in a shaking fury of vengeance, as Dorian would have done. Had done, or tried to do, back in his own youth against his own tormentor. No, young Klaus managed it through coldly-logical planning and endurance. When would he have cried about it, if ever? Dorian saw the answer, and it wounded him: Klaus had thus celebrated every solitary Christmas Eve, since.

"Couldn't you have trusted NATO? Fortunes of war, and all that -- things like this must happen. It wasn't your fault!"

Klaus shook his head, seeming decades younger and more vulnerable. Maybe it was just the fever, and the sniffles. "I might have. But in the debriefing --– Chief seemed surprised that they were found in the study. Very concerned for my welfare."

A very long silence, while Dorian mentally sharpened knives and reviewed floor plans of a certain secluded office in the NATO division in Bonn. "That's a nasty game to play on a rookie, even one he hated."

No," Klaus whispered. "Didn't hate me, then. _Wanted_ me. Couldn't get me -- I pretended I didn't know that he watched me, or why. Think I was supposed to crawl to him for comfort, after. I didn't! I played it my way, and he's always wondered since, if they even touched me."

"And you fight that memory out every year?"

The lips that should have been kissing Dorian senseless crooked in a slight, vicious grin. "Gives me strength to deal with that fat bastard, annually. _They_ died. But I'm going to give _him_ as many ulcers as I can."

Dorian hid a smile. So typically Klaus. The man could forge stoically ahead past rape and abuse, but he would never forgive a betrayal!

"Let me give you strength, now," said Dorian, resting his forehead on Klaus' cheek. "Don't sleep in this bed again, on any night, without me."

" 'S _my_ goddamned room. Maman let me pick it out, for the view down the valley. Won't give it up." Klaus sniffled again, almost defiantly, then turned and found Dorian's mouth in a deep kiss. It tasted of peppermint and Christmas spices, and of Dorian's familiar warmth.

The kiss ended with them sharing a long, silent look into each other's eyes. 'Maudlin', Klaus might have called it, seeing it in two other lovers. He was too absurdly happy to care. Then his nose gave him just enough warning to fling himself sideways into the pillows, before the next two sneezes arrived.

Dorian sighed, and kissed the back of Klaus' neck. The Major turned, lithe as a man half his age, and pulled Dorian down against his chest. "Can you make love to a man who does _that_ every five or ten minutes? Can't even _kiss_ you properly, right now," Klaus groaned.

"Dunno. Other things might be really fun with a sneeze or two helping out."

Dorian slipped down the bed, taking much of the red velvet with him, until he reached a part of Klaus that was more interested in Dorian than in old trials and slights.

After another, more-startled groan, Klaus decided to follow its lead.

"When I am well again --" he gasped, around the hot slick pressure of Dorian's mouth on his cock. Dorian said "Hmmmmmm?", and it nearly drove the next resolve out of Klaus' mind. But the Major was made of sterner stuff, and finished: "I'm gonna fucking _redecorate_ this suite!"

It was just as well that Dorian was forced to retreat at that moment, in a gale of laughter:

Klaus sneezed again.


End file.
